Board Game Review:Ghost Stories

Today is the day when I review another board game. For this outing, we'll look at a fun little co-operative board game. The name of this game is Ghost Stories, but don't be fooled by that name: it has nothing to do with sitting around a campfire trying to scare your friends. Instead, players are taking on the role of Taoist monks trying to defend a village that is being besieged by demons. It's hard, and it's maddening, and it's oh so much fun. But let's do this properly: I'll start, as always, with the numbers.

Strategy: 4
Randomness: 3
Complexity: 3
Humour: None
Attractiveness: Pretty
Average Length of Gameplay: 1 hour

An Overview of the Original World of Darkness (part 1)

In 1991, Mark Rein•Hagen's game Vampire: The Masquerade was released. This game took the roleplaying community by storm, and soon was one of the most prominent RPGs in the hobby. It was the first of five games planned by Rein•hagen, who intended to release a game about werewolves next, followed by one about wizards, one about faeries, and one about ghosts.

The order and specifics changed a bit; the game about wizards came to be known as Mage: The Ascension, the one about ghosts was named Wraith: The Oblivion and was moved up to be released before the one about faeries, and that final one came to be known as Changeling: The Dreaming. But all five of those games were released:

• Vampire: The Masquerade (1st edition 1991; 2nd edition 1992)
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1st edition 1992; 2nd edition 1994)
• Mage: The Ascension (1st edition 1993; 2nd edition 1995)
• Wraith: The Oblivion (1st edition 1994; 2nd edition 1996)
• Changeling: The Dreaming (1st edition 1995; 2nd edition 1997)

Large Group Games

The Dork Spouse and I haven't had a board game night at our house in several months now (with the exception of that dinner party the Dork Spouse hosted some weeks ago as a thank you to some people who helped her out at a big event). There are many reasons for this; we're super busy with other things; we're currently on Smart Hours for the summer which makes timing difficult, many of the people we invited often don't show up, etc). But one thing that always bothered me about Board Game Night when it did happen was that, on those few occasions in which more than a couple of people showed up, there are not very many games that accommodate a large number of players.

In our current inventory, the following games are the only ones that permit more than six players:

• Bananagrams (2 or more)
• Cards Against Humanity (2 or more)
• Citadels (2 to 8)
• Gloom (2 to 7, if you don't mind slow game play)
• Tsuro (2 to 8)
• Uno (2 to 10)
• Pictionary (3 to 16)
• Slap .45 (3 to 7)
• Superfight! (3 to 10)
• Winter Tales (3 to 7)
• Apples to Apples (4 to 10)
• The Resistance (and Avalon) (5 to 10)
• Guesstures (4 or more)
• Werewolves of Miller's Hollow (8 to 18)

Board Game Review: Coup

Here we go with another example of a misnomer: Coup is not actually a board game, but a card game. No matter, though; I shall review this amazing fun and easy (and very quick!) game. Prepare for political upheaval: we're going into the world of The Resistance again to take a look at a truly enjoyable game called Coup.

As always, we start with the numbers:

Strategy: 3
Randomness: 2
Complexity: 2
Humour: None
Attractiveness: Pretty
Average Length of Game Play: 15 minutes